Tag: grandchildren

As mothers, especially a single mother, as was dealt to me with the death of my husband, we sacrifice, nurture and work selflessly with both the heavy weight of parental responsibility and at the same time struggle to embrace the joys that come from raising humans we love like no other then, now and into eternity. Did I ever dream that when they were ready to leave the nest, it would be so far away?

Diaspora. How times have changed in just one generation. I often envy those families whose children are able to settle near them. It would be so nice to have family gatherings on the spur of the moment. Sunday dinners around the table with grandchildren and extended family members is but a dream for me. Sometimes that is a hard reality to face.

Fortunately for them, my children have had to move to where their interesting work took them. Unfortunately for me, they are all a long, long drive, or a winged trip away. It’s doable now, but the older I get I think about when it will not be so easy to hop a flight to be near those that I love so dearly.

I moved away from home when I went to college and never called my parents home mine again. I had dreams of my own that couldn’t be realized there. But, honestly, I never thought of how it must have affected my mother. Until lately. The shoe is on the other foot now for me and It doesn’t feel good at all. Isn’t the saying ‘just walk a mile in my shoes’? I now know how my mother must have felt when both of her children never permanently returned to her warm nest.

They say a good mother raises her children to be able to fly from the nest and spread their wings. Even though we know that is true and the unbridled happiness for our young is real, our mother-wing feathers are plucked bare, knowing life will never be the same.

In the end I have comfort in knowing that I have been blessed, that part of the way, they were to walk with me.

Life and thoughts and just about everything under the sun. The only order to it is life itself as lived. Natural chaos! I am married and have three grown children who are interested in breeding horses, flying and creating. My youngest is the lead singer/songwriter of the Grammy nominated band, Tonic, Emerson Hart. So here I am, wanting to read about you and at the same time bringing you along with me to mine. I hope you will find me just as interesting as I do you! Hop aboard.

“In my opinion two of the most meaningful short sentences that create positive human emotional response in the English language are ‘I love you.’ and ‘Thank you.’ ” – Sandra Hart

Having coffee in the stillness of the morning today, I was thinking about my grandchildren and how the world and even traditions are changing. For them, they are experiencing great things through technology and yet, great emotional and social losses because of it.

My most cherished book at age thirteen was Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette. Almost every girl I knew had a copy. To be able to navigate all social settings it just was the required guide to have as a young woman. Emily Post’s book first published in 1922 and updated on a regular basis to keep up with the changing society, was the standard book of reference to have as a young woman on etiquette for all occasions.

For most of my formative years it was my rescue to navigating thank you notes, large and complicated table settings, wedding gifts, invitations, resumes and even writing to the judiciary, government officials and titled persons. Anything and everything dealing with life and occasions, even proper death condolences was covered.

Throughout the years I tucked between Emily’s pages thank you notes from friends or important pieces of my emotional trivia. It became sort of a social cookbook of my life and it was the one book that I never wanted to part with.

I would love to share my traditions with my granddaughters with the more modern and updated versions by Elizabeth Post, but I don’t think they would be interested. An etiquette book probably would gather dust somewhere in their room. Times have changed.

If you are a grandparent, do you agree? We are witness to grandchildren and their generation who seem to be caught up with their heads in the vortex of the isolation of visual entertainment and keyboards, forgetting all about one-on-one social etiquette, or interest in sitting down to write a thank you note?

I love getting a thank you call, but my heart would sing to have the postman deliver an honest-to-goodness note in their handwriting that I could slip between the pages of my social cookbook. A thank you that indicates they have taken the time to let me know they love me.

What a great loss in human connectivity these techno kids will miss and sadly, may never be able to understand or recapture.
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Life is all a matter of relativity. As a young widow with three children I thought I had at times a very hard life. But recently certain events within my family brought me to think about the two generations that came before me and my grandmother and grandfather who lived on a farm in Ohio. If I really want to be honest, comparatively, my life, even in the worst of times, was a piece of cake. And I am ashamed to think I might have had a hard row-ever.

Enduring several miscarriages, my grandparents wound up with 10 living children to take care of. So, basically, in those days, my grandmother had the care of 10 children while Grandpa did ‘manly- head-of-household’ duties.

She and my grandfather lived on a farm and not only did she make all of their clothes, she cooked for all the family and farmhands, and on top of that made fresh bread daily. I still remember the flour sticking to her broad-knuckled hands as she wiped them on her apron, cleaning them between each kneading.

She did the seemingly endless farm and family wash by scrubbing on a washboard anchored on a big galvanized wash tub and then hung the laundry out on the line propped up by a pole in the middle to keep the weight of the wet wash from dragging the clothes to the ground. In the winter the clothes would freeze dry and the freezing temperatures made the sheets whiter than white, infusing the towels and clothing with the clean smell of God’s open country air. In the summer sheets would often be laid out on the green grass allowing nature’s bleach, the chlorophyll and sun, to take out any stains. Grandma knew how to make the tools of nature work for her.

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Once the laundry was dry, folded in baskets and brought into the kitchen, Grandma would iron all of the family clothes and sheets with a heavy solid iron heated on the kitchen coal stove top that today I would be pressed to even lift once without complaining.

She planted the vegetable garden every year. I remember helping her hoe the straight rows between the beans, lettuce, and strawberries. I can still see her bending over with her stovepipe bonnet huffing and puffing going about her work. I loved helping her pick strawberries ( one for me, one for the basket) and wondered while I filled my basket how she could gather pea and bean pods by folding up the corners of her long apron to make a sack for the pods.

But, I think, looking back, the best part of the day was when Grandma would let me tag along to the chicken coop in the morning to gather eggs. She taught me how to gently remove the eggs from the nests. I still remember how warm they felt as I caressed them in my hands before placing them in her basket. Sometimes I couldn’t resist putting the warm eggs against my cheeks so that I could feel their warmth on those chilly farm mornings.

“Here chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick.”

I can hear her soft voice calling her chickens as she lovingly allowed her grandchild to awkwardly throw handfuls of feed on the ground and sharing my excitement at watching the chickens run and peck, peck, peck, gobbling up their day’s nutrition.

The last memories I have of her and me together, my sweet grandma, is my sitting by her bedside after school and reading her the jokes from my Weekly Reader. Her gray curly hair pulled back in a pompadour style bun, her head resting on her pillow, she would quietly laugh as though she really liked the comfort I was trying to give her. Even in what would be her last days, Grandma was still working for her family. Giving me her last ounces of love.

My grandmother and those wives and mothers of her generation are the epitome of the adage of what they say, ” From sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done.”

Love you Grandma. I haven’t worked nearly as hard as you, or been loved as deeply as you, but, all things considered, life has been good to me and your other grandchildren. I think you would be happy to know that.